Showing posts with label depression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label depression. Show all posts

Thursday, January 01, 2009

1967 Again, maybe?

As a kid, I recall a little of the Detroit Riot of 1967. I was in Memphis and the flames on the front porch were a lot more visible at the time. It began after a police raid in a predominantly black neighborhood. And although race was significant as well as police brutality, economic, and social factors such as lack of affordable housing, added to the Riot, another one may be brewing in the D-town, if it don’t become a ghost town first. Today may be even worse with the collapse of the big car manufacturers, Ford, Chrysler and GM. Monday, and this Dec 23, 2008 report noting that the average price of a home is now $18,513 (less than a new car) and unemployment has reached 21 percent. Just in June the average home price was $19,448.

In October, 98 metropolitan areas reported jobless rates of at which was up 7.0 percent, up from 16 areas a year earlier, In October, Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, Mich., Add to the mix a 21.7% graduation rate for the 11th largest district in the country, Detroit Schools – this may be where the economic crisis first blows up and gets an human face.

Nationally some project that the December's job loss total will exceed November's and predicts the economy will have lost 3 million to 4 million jobs for the two years ending at December 2009. True, I look at it as the glass is half full and with the understanding that there aint no consistent definition of a Depression. The only consistent thing is the presence of long scale and extended unemployment. Im just cautious and with the way things work now: online banking and ATMS. Long lines in hospital emergency rooms because of no insurance and food prices across the country increasing about 7 percent alone in 2008, one doesn’t have to be absorbed with economics to know things do not look too good or that the depression looming will look a lot different than the great depressin. For if it ever gets to where 6 out of 10 households are economically distressed, then something is liable to hit the fan – question is where? So tell me what it looks like in your city.